Select a subset of combinations

Question

Suppose that I have a 20 X 5 matrix, I would like to select subsets of the matrix and do some computation with them. Further suppose that each sub-matrix is 7 X 5. I could o

Answer 1

I ended up doing what @Roland suggested, by modifying combn(), and byte-compiling the code:

combn_sub <- function (x, m, nset = 5000, seed=123, simplify = TRUE, ...) {
    stopifnot(length(m) == 1L)
    if (m < 0) 
        stop("m < 0", domain = NA)
    if (is.numeric(x) && length(x) == 1L && x > 0 && trunc(x) == 
        x) 
        x <- seq_len(x)
    n <- length(x)
    if (n < m) 
        stop("n < m", domain = NA)
    m <- as.integer(m)
    e <- 0
    h <- m
    a <- seq_len(m)
    len.r <- length(r <-  x[a] )
    count <- as.integer(round(choose(n, m)))
    if( count < nset ) nset <- count
    dim.use <- c(m, nset)       

    ##-----MOD 1: Change the output matrix size--------------
    out <- matrix(r, nrow = len.r, ncol = nset) 

    if (m > 0) {
        i <- 2L
        nmmp1 <- n - m + 1L

        ##----MOD 2: Select a subset of indices
        set.seed(seed)
        samp <- sort(c(1, sample( 2:count, nset - 1 )))  

        ##----MOD 3: Start a counter.
        counter <- 2L    

        while (a[1L] != nmmp1 ) {
            if (e < n - h) {
                h <- 1L
                e <- a[m]
                j <- 1L
            }
            else {
                e <- a[m - h]
                h <- h + 1L
                j <- 1L:h
            }
            a[m - h + j] <- e + j

            #-----MOD 4: Whenever the counter matches an index in samp, 
            #a combination of row indices is produced and stored in the matrix `out`
            if(samp[i] == counter){ 
                out[, i] <- x[a]
                if( i == nset ) break
                i <- i + 1L
            }
            #-----Increase the counter by 1 for each iteration of the while-loop
            counter <- counter + 1L
        }
    }
    array(out, dim.use)
}

library("compiler")
comb_sub <- cmpfun(comb_sub)